1. At the beginning of our course together, we had discussed the reality that for every “genre” of literature there is a correlating “purpose” for writing, on the part of the author. For example, if the genre is a persuasive essay, the author’s purpose is to pursuade. If the literature is a narrative essay (short story), then the author’s purpose is likely to entertain.In the same way that the style of literature dictates the author’s purpose, the same style of literature should dictate your purpose for reading. This may seem a new idea for some, a purpose for reading other than because you are required to or for enjoyment. The reality is, in order to comprehend and retain more from reading a piece of literature, you have to ‘get in the game’, so to speak. (Michael keeps correcting me… saying “We aint talkin’ about practice…”) To make this point clear, that an author’s purpose for writing something dictates or directs our purpose for reading, we went through a handout that attempted to make this pretty clear.

   So why are we talking about Listening Skills? Because the students are going to be participating in a province-wide Reading Assessment. You ask how one has to do with the other, but they’re perfectly linked. To help students recognize the traits of a “type or genr” of literature, we did some listening activities with students having to provide the evidence they could find of that genre.

   I did the same activity with the ELA 20 class in the first semester, and with another group of students the year before. Here’s a link to the same write up but with some of the videos attached that the students seemed so intrigued by. 

What purpose for listening would this type of video require?